Romania / 06-08-2015

Nearly 1 in 4 Romanians want their country free of Jews — poll

Nearly a quarter of Romanian respondents in a survey
on Jews said their country should have no Jewish residents.

The results of the survey among 1,000 Romanian adults were published
last week by the Elie Wiesel National Institute for Holocaust Studies in
Romania, which commissioned the Centre for Opinion and Market Studies to
conduct the poll in June.

Eleven percent described Jews as “a problem for Romania” and 22 percent
said they would like them only as tourists. Media reports about the poll did
not specify its margin of error.

Romania had a Jewish population of over 750,000 before its pro-Nazi
regime, led by Ion Antonescu, collaborated in the murder of about half of
Romanian Jewry in the Holocaust. Antonescu’s troops also massacred 120,000 Jews
in present-day Ukraine.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents indicated they had heard of the
Holocaust — a 12 percent increase over a similar poll conducted in 2007 — but
only a third of those respondents who knew about the Holocaust believe it
happened in their country.

Only 19 percent of respondents who were aware of the Holocaust and said
it occurred in Romania said Antonescu’s government was responsible. Some 54 percent
of survey respondents called Antonescu “a patriot.”

Romanians who survived the Holocaust mostly left for Israel and now
Romania has only a few thousand Jews, mostly living in Bucharest.